SOURCE: "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882-1945," in The Voices of History: Great Speeches of the English Language, Stein & Day, 1979, pp. 202-08.

In the following excerpt, George-Brown introduces selections from Roosevelt's most historically significant speeches.

Governor of New York before he became the thirty-second President of the United States in 1932, Roosevelt was a powerful speaker. He won the Presidency in four consecutive elections, and during this long period in office was the first President to broadcast directly to the people.

In 1932, the country was in the thick of unprecedented depression. Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address on 4 March 1933 set out his New Deal programme of reform, and concluded as follows:

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward we...